Quote from flipside21:
Successful traders, tell us your trading secrets so we can all copy you. LOL...
Actually, I think any strategy that earns extraordinary returns are usually temporary. That's the nature of the markets.
The best example is the turtle moving average and other breakout strategies having a tough time from the mid 1980s to late 1990s, only to be resuscitated in time for the commodities boom.
What the market DOESN'T do is as important as what it does do.
You should strive to be the "smartest dumb money" in the market.
Every tick is important, but not every tick requires that you take action.
You'll make far more money reacting than you will predicting.
Sometimes it's smarter to wait for the market to move 10 handles in the direction you want to trade before entering than it is to enter on the next tick in that direction.
Everything in the market is self-defined. Just like for a physicist there is nothing outside the universe, for a trader, there is nothing outside the market. Yes, this includes the "real economy".
Perhaps the most important thing you can do to improve your returns is learn how to identify "false positive" signals from your methodology without completely reworking it.
Really good trading always has at least some hint of contrarianism to it, but not too much.
The market is, actually (and thankfully), always wrong.
At any given moment, if you understand the underlying logic of the market's fluctuations, you will know if you should be long, short, both or flat, where and when you should have entered and where your current exit is. If you don't, you should know that the best of those who you are competing against do. If you like those odds, by all means, keep trading.